American literature

Lectures: 2 sessions / week, 1.5 hours / session

This is a HASS–CI class. Like other communications-intensive classes in the humanities, arts, and social sciences, it allows students to produce 20 pages (5000 words) of polished writing with careful attention to revision. It also offers substantial opportunities for oral expression, through presentations of written work, student-led discussion, and class participation. The class has a low enrollment that ensures maximum attention to student writing and opportunity for oral expression.

This class surveys the American narrative about itself, focusing on such topics as: Myths of Origin, Declarations of Independence, Realism and Satire, and Rewriting History. Although we address a wide range of authors (Emerson, Hawthorne, Melville, Thoreau, Stowe, Whitman, Dickinson, Wharton, Hurston, among others), students also scrutinize certain core works in historical, biographical, and literary contexts: Mary Rowlandson's Narrative of the Captivity and Restoration, Frederick Douglass's Narrative, Mark Twain's The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, and Toni Morrison's Jazz.

Baym, Nina, Wayne Franklin, Philip F. Gura, et al. eds. The Norton Anthology of American Literature. Shorter 7th ed. W. W. Norton & Company, 2007. ISBN: 9780393930573.

[Morrison] = Morrison, Toni. Jazz. Plume, 1993. ISBN: 9780452269651.

Readings are in the Norton Anthology, unless otherwise noted.

This course consists of both an oral component, which accounts for 25% of the grade, and a written component, which counts for 75%.

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